Tiny Transactions on Computer Science

Spammage

Posts tagged ‘youtube’

YouTube is something of a cesspool, with pockets of exceptional quality here and there. Even the higher quality videos have an ephemeral aspect, mysteriously vanishing or being marked Private, from one day to the next. Others succumb to the more prosaic, account suspended due to multiple copyright violations. Illegal uploads of major recording label artists abound, or did. YouTube is also becoming a go-to destination for low-fidelity live concert recordings.

There’s no shortage of fee-based alternatives, so I’m not complaining.

YouTube – Broadcast Yourself included a hyper-linked line of text at the bottom of my search results today. It read something along the lines of “Discover video treasures on YouTube”.

What could be described in such glowing terms amongst the mess of poor quality content, or poor quality recordings of high quality content, that constitutes much of YouTube? “Video treasures” evokes the phrase “national treasure” which is such a contrast to the petabytes and exabytes of inane user comments attached to most videos, regardless of the associated video’s (sometimes worthwhile) content. Well, I clicked and saw a page with the heading,

YouTube Topics on Search Beta

and the following announcement:

YouTube Topics is a new way to explore the worlds of videos on YouTube. After you opt in, when you search for something (“funny” for example) you will see topics related to your current search displayed at the top of search results and next to individual videos. You can click on these topics to switch to that topic on search.

You can also add a topic to your current search by clicking on the + sign that shows when you hover over it. Each new topic you click will give you new results to explore. Here’s a query to start with, so you can see how it works: camera tricks

You may have noticed a “golden topic” when you tried this. We’ve scattered topics across the site for you to find (including this one), and if you can find and click on them all, you’ll unlock a special YouTube Logo to prove your puzzle prowess.

For more clues about the golden topics and for other questions you have, read this article in the Help Center.

An advisory that I am currently not opted in to Topics on Search Beta, and must Click here to opt in, is at the end of the page. I will opt in. I feel a bit uneasy in light of Facebook’s announcement (and rumored retraction) that it would release users’ names, addresses and phone numbers to 3rd-party developers unless the user opted out. I do not use Facebook. Also, I trust Google significantly more than Facebook! Plus I checked the URL associated with the Click here and it appears to be genuine!

My next post will advise whether or not this scavenger hunt for “golden topics” is worthwhile, or the goal attainable. Perhaps I will even have that intriguing “special YouTube Logo” to display, as proof of my puzzle prowess…

Usually, when you delete a Google Account, all related Google Services are deleted at the same time. There was a long-standing bug with linked YouTube-Google Accounts. When you deleted your Google Account YouTube as a service was not deleted.

Your YouTube Account was tied to the Google Account. Since the Google Account was deleted, the Google Account and YouTube password became invalid. You were consequently unable sign into the YouTube Account. The bug caused the content in your YouTube Account still remained live for a while though.

We’ve fixed this bug, and now when you delete your Google Account the entire Google Account, and related services (YouTube included), will be deleted.

We’re also retro-actively deleting the YouTube Accounts which were impacted by the bug and which were not deleted at the same time when you deleted the Google Account. These YouTube Accounts were inaccessible but the videos were still live on the site. The bug has now been corrected and the YouTube Accounts and associated content have been deleted.

…

Google Account:

Services:

etc.

When you deleted your Google Account, the entire Account, plus the related services should be deleted:

+

=

Deleted

Due to the bug though, the YouTube Account was not deleted and the YouTube Account remained live on the site.

=

Now that the bug is fixed, all Google services, including YouTube are deleted when you delete your Google Account:

The YouTube channel for Google Beat offers a single 2 – 3 minute summary of high frequency searches from the previous week. These are very topical, more like a television news program sound bite. So far there has not been any other activity at the site. There are a total of nine of these weekly “search in review” videos as of today, 24 October 2010.